Book review: To stammer or not to stammer

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Volunteer reviewer Jack Nicholas shares his thoughts on the yet-to-be published memoir To Stammer Or Not To Stammer — Between A Rock And A Hard Place by Tim Shanks.

A stammer can define a life, steering you, for better or worse, into paths you might not otherwise have chosen. It can provoke a hunger for a different life. It can prompt decades of difficult choices. Sadly and too often, it creates shame and fear. 

It takes courage to be honest about that shame and fear. Tim Shanks' account of how his approach to stammering shaped his life is shockingly brave. Relentlessly, he examines his fears, avoidance, his experiences of speech therapy and his many different attempts to control his stammering. His hope is that his hard-won understanding may help others. It almost certainly will, but, trigger warning, his bracing honesty can sometimes make uncomfortable reading. This is a cold shower of a memoir. 

It relates a lifetime challenging every aspect of stammering, whether that is the writing style of Dave McGuire (one of the originators of the costal breathing technique), or costal breathing itself, or questioning if the aims and principles of Stammering Pride are relevant for all people who stammer. Almost every reader will need a trigger warning for some part of this memoir! But that is not to deny the honesty of its questioning and breadth of its exploration.

Shanks is a gifted wordsmith who can be both funny and bleak. He has written often for STAMMA and back in the days of the British Stammering Association, where he worked in the 1990s, was a considerable and well-known force, arguing the case for people who stammer with passion and humour. 

Tim Shanks' account of how his approach to stammering shaped his life is shockingly brave. 

This memoir is taken from a longer autobiography and concentrates on how he has spent much of his life trying to manage, avoid, and ultimately perhaps come to terms with his stammer. The result is a fascinating and important account of how speech therapy and attitudes to stammering have changed over the last 60 or 70 years. This is social and therapeutic history written from the perspective of someone who has lived through it, someone bloodied, but ultimately unbowed. 

Shanks talks of distressingly difficult times. His childhood must have been hard, perhaps even abusive. His father was a cold man who cheated on his wife, believed he should never have had children, and was irritated by his son. His mother was controlling, wanting Shanks to be both fluent and speaking with a socially acceptable accent. She once told him she took a valium every time he called! Shanks started school nervous, anxious, desperate to fit in and be accepted. He left school facing a life apparently constrained by drink and debt problems, anxiety and depression. It seemed that stammering was at the heart of all this. Therefore, the only option was to not stammer using whatever means possible. 

Whatever means possible appeared to fall into two groups: avoidance and speech therapy. Avoidance — trying to hide his stammer — is one reason for Shanks' remarkable cv: 

My avoidance of stammering has led me down many varied avenues of employment and different therapeutic mazes. I have had over 30 jobs in my working life — some for seven hours, some for seven days, some for seven years. I have run out of several in tears. I have been a landscape gardener, art gallery attendant, milkman, bottle washer, trainee journalist, production line worker, textile warehouseman, street light cleaner, mail-order delivery driver, car valet, forecourt attendant, airport baggage handler, soft drink delivery man, factory cleaner… 

While walking out of work, on, it seems an almost daily basis, he was walking into different types of speech therapy with equal frequency, if rather more application. A key section of the book titled 'Four Wise Men' describes the therapies of Wendell Johnson, Charles Van Riper, Joseph Sheehan and William H. Perkins. Shanks sees these four therapists (the first three were themselves people who stammered) as the most important influences on modern therapy, not least because they moved the focus of therapy from 'speaking more fluently' to 'stammering more fluently', considering the emotional context of stammering rather than simply concentrating on the mechanics of speech. 

One of the saddest parts of this book is Shanks' belief that Stammering Pride came too late to be of real help for him. His hope is that others may realise that they have choices.

Unfortunately, Shanks discovered that 'stammering more fluently' — the idea that if you stop trying to control your stammer, the tension involved in speaking will reduce — is no easy task: it requires perseverance and self-acceptance. He said of his experiences with Sheehan's approach:

Avoidance reduction therapy was very hard, and you had to have the ego-strength and psychological maturity to tolerate it. I did not. You had to be very motivated. I was not. You had to be patient. I was not. I suspect I was always sabotaging my therapy, because I didn't really want to overcome my stammering. I was using it as an excuse for not dealing with the other issues in my life of anxiety and depression.

This is the paradox that Shanks describes in the book's title, as being between a rock and a hard place. He could want fluency and fear stammering, while at the same time fearing fluency and wanting to continue stammering. A stammer can be a defensive shield, an excuse for not tackling other issues or attempting other challenges in life. This is the 'giant in chains' theory — where you tell yourself "I would do great things if I was not held back by my xyz…" It is to Shanks' credit that he realises this and makes strenuous efforts to accept stammering and face other issues in his life. He describes this as moving from thinking of himself as a giant in chains and instead claiming the label of 'free pygmy'! 

Confronting his own personal and emotional barriers has its benefits, and there are joys in this bare, brave book. Shanks says, "I had never thought previously that I would have children because I would not be able to read to them at bedtime or make a speech at their wedding. I have since done both." 

One of the saddest parts of this book is Shanks' belief that Stammering Pride came too late to be of real help for him. His hope is that others may realise that they have choices; you can navigate between the rock and the hard place, you can define your own life. As he says, "Good luck with your own stammering journey — whatever it may be." 

To Stammer Or Not To Stammer — Between A Rock And A Hard Place by Tim Shanks is not available to buy, but the author has kindly offered to send you a digital copy. Email editor@stamma.org and we will forward it on to Tim. It is free, although Tim says: "a small donation to STAMMA would be appreciated". You can donate here.

Thank you to Jack for writing this review for STAMMA.

Please note that although the author Tim Shanks worked for the BSA (now STAMMA) in the past, any views and opinions expressed in this book are his and his alone.